


In your anger do not sin

by RainonyourBack



Category: Shaman King (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Anger Management, Cinderella Elements, Coming of Age, F/M, Improper Tea Brewing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:08:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25934182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RainonyourBack/pseuds/RainonyourBack
Summary: Sometimes sleep is hard to come by.Sometimes all you can do is lend a hand.
Relationships: Iron Maiden Jeanne & Tao Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 3
Collections: Funbari Hill Requests





	In your anger do not sin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [i-love-sk (Elie)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=i-love-sk+%28Elie%29).



_“In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry,_ _and do not give the devil a foothold. Anyone who has been stealing must steal no longer, but must work, doing something useful with their own hands, that they may have something to share with those in need._

Ephesians, 4:26

* * *

He finds it in the evening. He’s lying down on his bed, back to the door and his worried friends. He’s angry. He’s still so goddamn angry. He threw everything he had in the room at the door, and he’s still angry.

His entire chest is split open by the terrible line, the reminder. All pretenses torn from him, he is back to square one, the poor cinder child locked in the basement, with chains on the wall and thirty leashes for hoping.

For daring to.

Fuck you, Cinderella.

It’s in the pockets of his pants, folded so many times it’s smaller than the nail of his smallest toe. He unfolds it with shaky fingers, and it’s a slip of paper, with words scrawled on. _Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry_.

The first thing that rises is, predictably, rage.

Who the fuck – how dare they put that in his pants? It wouldn’t be Yoh, it’s written in English, and bad English, too. There’s an s missing on _hands_. One added to _need_. It has to be them, hasn’t it? The X-Laws.

He feels dirty. These people are _strangers_. They had no right to touch him, to hold him, to… revive him. It wouldn’t have felt worse if he’d been conscious to feel their hands on him. And to lay him down on a bed of flowers – fuck – who the fuck does that?

Who was it, then? The captain? He’d kill him. Fucking Marco whatshiname is always having a stroke about one thing or another. His men are all like that, rabid dogs on a vague pretense of a leash. Fuckers, all of them.

Well, no. She isn’t angry, is she? She’s too busy being a stupidly powerful crybaby. He made her cry just by telling the truth. Is this why he hasn’t torn up the quote yet? Instead he’s holding it so tight his fist trembles.

She’s the one who touched him last. Who brought him back. And she’s the one who was sanctimonious enough to slip him that paper.

_Fuck her_. Who does she think she is? Why didn’t she give that paper to her idiot captain instead, uh? Or does that mean she wants him to become one of her soldiers? _Do not give the devil a foothold_? Fuck her.

The mattress went through the window all too easily. He sleeps on the floor. In the morning the paper is still there.

* * *

_In your anger do not sin_

* * *

Twenty-two year old Ren Tao is lost.

He has a business degree and more money than anyone could ever need but he doesn’t know what to make of it. He was the only one out of the five who ever realized that changing the world couldn’t be done without playing the capitalist game, but now – he doubts.

Shouldn’t he have done like Yoh? Wandered through war zones and protested outside UN headquarters? Does it have meaning to create companies and invest in stock markets? He’s been in school long enough to see the racism, the xenophobia at every turn. Creating anything beyond China will be _challenging_ and while he does not fear challenges he is lost.

So he travels. ‘Builds connections’, he tells his family. Wanders in and out of countries, in and out of cities and sometimes through wild and beautiful countryside.

The paper is still with him. He didn’t think on it much during the tournament. Certainly didn’t think on it before his fights. Every one of his steps has been his and remained so.

He saw her again, a couple of times. He wanted – he wasn’t sure, but something in him wanted to catch her angry. Like it would free him of the paper – like the words wouldn’t mean anything if the one who gave them to him didn’t live by her own advice.

But while the Iron Maiden was very much driven by her emotions, he could never find her anger.

Even when her stupid captain disobeyed and bit the bullet for good. Her scream cut through the air like a doll shattering, but she wasn’t angry.

Even when the Patch taunted her. She fought Rutherford and it was painful to admit but he found it impressive, the strength of her. The force of her determination, even as she cried, even as the King’s sorrow bled into her own. No anger.

He thinks of her more often, now that the tournament is over. Well, not of her, exactly, but of the paper. The advice on it isn’t that bad, after all. He keeps it in mind, not just when he’s angry, but also when thinking of what he wants to do. Help those in need. Yes, but how?

He hits a smaller French city in the middle of August. The heat is unbearable; the streets are barren and there is not one spot of shade. There is a church, though – barely a church, a few old walls, a bell that hasn’t been touched in years, at the top of a thousand stairs that he’s told people used to climb on their knees. He doesn’t know if the building’s important. He doesn’t really care for anything but the shade, at present, and the challenge of it makes it acceptable.

As he approaches he notices someone filling a bucket by the wall. They are wearing a large sunhat over a long, flowing dress, their back to him. There is a mop by the wall next to them and for a second, Ren curses silently. If the place is closed for cleaning there goes his chance at shade.

But right then the stranger turns, and promptly throws the contents of the bucket at his feet.

_“Oh, pardon,”_ a voice says, _“je suis désolée 1!"_

Their eyes meet, and suddenly he is back there, fourteen and waking up with a crevasse in his chest.

* * *

_In your anger do not sin_

* * *

She slips in for a second to warn the officials and then they are off. She offered him her apartment to dry off, since it is ‘her fault’. She didn’t see him, or feel him. So she says.

The old Ren wouldn’t believe that. How would someone with her furyoku and training not recognize that another shaman was approaching? She did it on purpose. She is mocking him.

But he isn’t the old Ren anymore, and he accepts it for what it is.

There is a balcony kissed by sunlight. She tells him to leave his shoes and socks there. She doesn’t have pants for him to change into, so instead he gets a towel to wrap around his midsection.

In the small kitchen that doubles as a living room, he sits at the table while she prepares tea. There are only two chairs.

“I didn’t know you were in Europe,” she says as she places a Likton packet in the first mug and puts it in the microwave. He tries not to cringe.

When she says _in Europe_ , he hears _on that patch of sun-baked stone_ , he hears _in my country_ , _on my home ground_. Is it how she feels about this place?

“No,” she says, and he understands he spoke out loud. “I have been going from place to place for a little while now. I try to learn about my heritage, see? I was young when I left.”

Her hat is hung by the door. Her hair is still long, but she wears it in braids now, pinned to the back of her skull. The dress that reaches her ankles is sleeveless, and his eyes catch the star charts on her arms, all in that thin silver thread that speaks of scars.

He can tell she is looking at him, and so he looks up, embarrassed for obscure reasons. “They don’t give you trouble?”

She is smiling, and doesn’t seem bothered. “Not really. I can be very persuasive.”

He doesn’t doubt it, somehow.

They drink the Likton tea in microwaved water and silence. It takes him a while to take the wallet out. He isn’t sure how to talk about it. If he should at all.

“I don’t think you remember,” he starts, and deflates like a sorry balloon, “but you lost that back then.”

He hands her the crumpled piece of paper. He’s been trying to take care of it, really he has, but the damage was already done.

She takes it curiously. She doesn’t seem to remember until she reads it. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry for how I was back then.”

“No, no!” She struggles to express her thoughts, then settles. “You were entitled to your anger. I think… I think I hoped that if I couldn’t help the person I really wanted to help, I could at least help you.”

The fact that she seemingly lives alone here does not speak to success, as far as _the person she really wanted to help_ goes. Whatshisname. Could he really not make the effort, for her?

He puts his hand on the table, just a little too roughly, and he sees her eyes follow that hand. Is it familiar to her? Raw anger? He feels guilty.

“It did,” he insists, “it did help me.”

“Really? Then… then good.”

She folds the paper back, a lot more careful than he ever was with it, and fast, ever so fast. “Keep it. It is yours.”

She holds it for him to take, and he considers it, her. She wears a cross over her dress. A splash of color hints at a tattoo on her shoulder. She has changed, but she is still herself.

Suddenly, a rush of jealousy. She seems so much more at ease with herself and the world than he is. She isn’t lost; her every move speaks of peace and quiet.

“How did you do it?”

He watches her blink, confused. “I’m not sure I understand what you mean.”

“How did you move on?”

The cross and the church and her apparent isolation all whisper that she hasn’t, she can’t, she won’t. But he can tell she has.

Right now, she seems to be looking for something in the curve of his eye. Some kind of – oh. Is she still expecting anger?

“I figured out what was good,” she says, “about Marco, Luchist, and myself. And then I asked how I could help.”

She tells him of money put to work, of homes set up to welcome children like her, of organizations set up to relay the demands of the helpless. It wasn’t much, at first. But to five children, to ten women, to thirty people it was home. And she isn’t finished.

“So the church…”

“This one is small and runs on volunteers. They give soup at lunchtime. That’s what builds community, you see? Food, light, warmth.”

He doesn’t feel all that lost, anymore.

* * *

_In your anger do not sin_

* * *

He calls her five weeks later with the news: he has decided what kind of company he is going to run. What kind of company can change the world. It’ll be one that deals with energy, provides electricity, heating, connection.

She commands him. She feels far away and distant, still. On another road, to something else. But it is fine. She doesn’t have to be near to help. He has the paper.

He sleeps and he is not angry.

**Author's Note:**

>   1. Jeanne says, in her native French: "Oh, I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!" [ ▲ ]
> 
> ...
> 
> This was a request from someone on the Funbari Hill discord, our very sweet Eli, and it... bloomed out of proportion, lol. 
> 
> The prompt was JxR Cinderella, with Ren as Cinderella. I'm not too sure how apparent that is! I basically started from the slipper/piece of paper, but I wanted it to have a different angle. So it's not a slipper meant to help him find her, but something meant to help him find himself. Jeanne is less of the Prince and more of the Godmother in a sense.
> 
> I think parallels between Marco and other male characters are an easy but true shot... Hao's an easy one, but Ren and Horo work, too.
> 
> I hope you enjoyed that! If you have more requests, I'm open to SK pals. Cannot promise I will fulfill them all, or any, but try me!
> 
> 



End file.
